Spc. Jerod H. Osborne of Royce City died July 5 in an IED attack in Yakuta, Afghanistan.

He was serving as a medic with the 4th Squadron, 73rd Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, N.C.

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By J.J. Smith. After hearing President Obama’s prime-time speech at West Point Military Academy last night, U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Rockwall) announced this morning he is pleased that President Obama seems to have listened to General Stanley McCrystal’s recommendations and ordered an increase of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

“I am pleased that the President seems to have listened to the recommendations of General McCrystal and has ordered an increase of troops to Afghanistan,” said Hall.

“It is essential that we listen to the input of our generals on the ground, and I know when I visited Iraq it was important to hear first-hand what General Petraeus was seeing on the battlefield.”

Hall added that the increase in troop levels is essential but he is opposed to an artitrary withdrawl date as proposed by the President.

“The increase in troop levels is essential to success, though I am against an arbitrary withdrawal date that emboldens our enemies and undermines our efforts.”

“The fight against terrorists in Afghanistan is important to the future security of America and will hopefully prevent another 9-11, and we look forward to the day when we can welcome home those serving on the battlefield.”

Hall said he believes that we should pay for the increase by reigning in spending rather than through new taxes.

“Some have suggested that we pay for the war through new taxes – in addition to spending trillions of dollars on government-run health care or cap-and-trade bills that tax all forms of energy.”

We face a future that already will saddle our children and grandchildren with enormous debt, and we cannot afford to add to their burden.  We need to try to pay for the war efforts by reining in spending and strengthening the economy – not by creating new government-run programs.”

By Jerry Hogan, US Army Lt. Colonel (retired). And the argument goes on! Sitting on one side of the table are the President and his civilian advisors trying to understand military operations so they can make a decision on what the US should do about Afghanistan going forward. On the other side sit the military Generals and Admirals who have devoted their lives to studying and fighting wars. They think they know what should be done and they are arguing their case to convince the civilians of their proposed strategy.

So on one hand you have a group that really doesn’t understand the military ways of doing things but must face the political consequences if they decide wrong. On the other hand, you have a group that understands the military implications, but with the conservative nature of their profession, to insure against failure and to also consider the unknowns of war, they are arguing for a force and a strategy that probably has lots of safeguards and built in reserves if they are wrong.

So what do we the American people do to understand the issue?

It’s complex but really pretty simple if you ask a grunt Lieutenant who has been living on the ground in Afghanistan for the last year, humping an 80-pound rucksack, carrying 60 pounds of body armor, drinking 30 bottles of water a day, and trying to survive and keep his men in one piece and alive until their tour is up. As he puts it, “there can only be one strategy that wins in Afghanistan: contain Pakistan, secure the population, the US Army and Marines need to get out of the Forward Operating Bases (FOB) and put small units no larger than Platoon size (about 40 men) out to mutually supporting positions among the population. Stop worrying about the MRAP (Mine Resistance Ambushed Protection vehicle) and other awful boondoggles that have no place in Afghanistan. Empower junior leaders by giving them battlespace (area of operations they will be responsible for with their forces) and holding them accountable for what happens in it. Right now there is no cohesive COIN (Counter Insurgency) strategy, no unity of command, no unity of effort and the focus is on the Taliban. This is backwards: secure the population and render the Taliban a moot point.”

He makes sense.

The big issue is Pakistan. It is a rogue Moslem nation with a new unsettled government. Their President was forced to resign from the Presidency after he first was forced to resign as head of the armed forces. The current President is the husband of a former Prime Minister who was thrown out of the country for corruption, allowed back in to run for PM, and then killed during the campaign less than two years ago. Her husband took her place in the race against another former PM who was also thrown out for corruption and allowed to come back into the country so he too could run for PM. The husband won the election and when the President resigned, he moved up.

While the military has always been the stabilizing force in the country, with the removal of the military president, there is uncertainty if this stabilization will remain. The country is one of nine countries of the world that has nuclear weapons. While they have been under the control and supervision of the military, because of the influence of the extremist Moslem groups in Pakistan, there is question as to the ability of the military to continue to safeguard the weapons if the government were to fall. More and more of the strict Sharia Law is becoming part of the everyday Pakistan life and continued pressure is being put on the government to adopt even more of this life style. The fear is that migrating extremists coming from Afghanistan into Pakistan to avoid the American and NATO forces will take control of the country turning it into a sanctuary for displaced Afghanistan Taliban and Al Queda terrorist fighters. With this occupation comes control of the government and then control of the nuclear weapons. And that is the West’s worst nightmare…Nuclear Weapons in the hands of terrorists.

So that’s the BIG problem when you debate a strategy for Afghanistan. All of the rest is how do you keep this from happening.

Our efforts over the last eight years have produced poor results. We have been able to oversee a free election, but now the world, and the Afghans, recognizes the winner of that election as being corrupt so that he cannot gain the respect and control of his country. We have been able to drive the Taliban into the hills and caves and across the border into Pakistan, but we have not been able to stop the movement back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For a long time the Taliban would only have limited engagements with the US and NATO forces, but now we are seeing more and larger scale attacks from the Taliban. Bombings are becoming more common in the cities and the Taliban are growing in both strength and scope of action against US and NATO forces.

While Iraq has a very centralized governmental structure, Afghanistan has a very decentralized culture, life style, and physical structure. What worked in Iraq may not work in Afghanistan. But for any strategy to work, it must be one that involves the civilian population…you simply cannot kill all the bad guys; you must have the support of the people.

And that is what they are saying in Washington and that is what the grunt Lieutenant that spent the last year in Afghanistan is saying…”You have to protect the people, get them involved and make the victory their victory.”

How many additional US forces will it take to do this? I don’t know, but the choices are clear…either put sufficient forces in-country to insure TOTAL victory, or get out now. There will be no half-victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan!

Jerry Hogan is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who lives in Heath, Texas. He volunteers to write these articles and can be reached at 214-394-4033 or jerryhogan@sbcglobal.net

The Military View Column, By Heath resident Jerry Hogan, US Army Lt. Col (ret.)

Michael Shupak, formerly of Forney and now living in Rockwall, graduated from South Garland High School in 2000. In 2002 he went to work for the State of Texas and became a correctional officer in the Texas prison system. In 2004 he joined the USMC reserves.

According to him, “I wanted to immediately go on active duty, but the billet I was slated for was filled and I had to first go in the Reserves.” Since then he has managed to balance two different careers, one military and one civilian. He has been successful in both.

Michael first deployed to Iraq in 2006 where he was assigned with his unit to the bloody Al Anbar Province. Returning it was then back to his civilian job at the Coffield prison unit in Tennessee Colony, Texas.

Two short years there and then it was another deployment, this time to Afghanistan. He returned in August of this year and is still on active duty until January of next year when he will then return to his civilian job. And as he puts it, “I have the utmost respect for all the people serving right beside me in the armed forces. We all play a special part in the war on terrorism and there is not much difference between one in the reserves and one of active duty…we all are Marines, we all do the same job, we all were trained the same, and we all know our basic job of being a rifleman and fighting the enemy.”

He continued with, “After being on two deployments, I have seen some funny things and some things that still give me nightmares. I was driving a vehicle that was hit with an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). While none of us were hurt badly, just the experience of this happening continues to bother me. I have seen body bags containing dead Iraqis and vehicles of ours that were covered in blood from other Marines. All of this affects us but we are a close bunch and we treat each other like family. We play jokes on one another and laugh and cut up but we also know that we are likely to be wounded or killed at any time. That’s why we consider each other as brothers and sisters and why we would do anything for each other and back each other 100%.”

I asked Michael his future plans and he responded, “I have a little over two years left on my enlistment and I have not decided whether to stay in. The State of Texas has been great with supporting me while I was on active duty and I really love the Marine Corps life style. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me and I am just going to see where it all leads in two more years. I know that some people don’t support what we are doing, but it is what we were trained for and frankly, we are the best in the world. I will do it again with no questions asked just so my family and friends are safe and out of harm’s way.”

Here is another of our local heroes who is balancing both a civilian and a military career. Please tell him and his buddies thanks for what they do for us.

Jerry Hogan is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who volunteers to write this article. He can be reached at jerryhogan@sbcglobal.net or 214-394-4033.